This month, Mitacs launched the Mitacs Skills for Innovation project – which will deliver a series of reports examining the skills needed for different innovation activities across the Canadian economy.
In the first report, Sharpening Canada’s Skills Advantage, expert authors Creig Lamb and Dr. Daniel Munro (Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship and Shift Insights) take a deep dive into Canada’s biggest innovation advantage: our talent. Drawing on surveys of organizations and interns involved in Mitacs’s Elevate and Accelerate programs, the report looks at the general and specialized skills that Canada needs to innovate.
Despite a highly educated population and a labor force of skilled and motivated people, Canada’s innovation performance continues to lag behind its global peers. This report seeks to better understand the specific skills that Canadian talent needs to develop in order to address this gap and complete the full suite of activities and tasks that comprise the continuum of innovation. These can be broadly divided into two categories: general skills, required across all types of innovation; and specialized skills, which some but not all people on innovation teams must have to succeed.
General skills are things like curiosity and creativity; basic data and digital skills such as statistical literacy and the ability to navigate online research; scientific principles and methods such as the ability to develop a hypothesis; and certain social and emotional skills like collaboration, listening, and communication.
More specialized skills are things like advanced data and digital skills such as programming, computer science, and statistical analysis; management skills; and design skills, including prototyping, testing, and solutions design.
Sharpening Canada’s Skills Advantage is now available for download.
Mitacs: Inspiring innovation and driving creative solutions
Mitacs empowers Canadian innovation through effective partnerships that deliver solutions to our most pressing problems.
For over 20 years, Mitacs has assisted organizations in reaching their goals, has funded cutting-edge innovation and has created job opportunities for students and postdocs.
We are committed to driving economic growth and productivity and to creating meaningful change to improve the quality of life for all Canadians.
Our mission is to build a world-class, diverse community of innovators through our collaborative model, attracting and deploying top talent to the industry, and matching needs with expertise to create ambitious solutions to real-world challenges.
We believe that increasing Canada’s productivity and prosperity will be driven by successful innovation and we’re passionate about developing the next generation of researchers who will work to fuel Canada’s knowledge-based economy.
Discover us at mitacs.ca
